New plans not too dissimilar to SEI?

Come to think of it, this new plan of Bush's reminds me quite a bit of his
fathers SEI - the Space Exploration Initiative from 1989.

The most prominent difference is that the manned spacecraft bound for Mars
are no longer to be assembled in LEO, but on the surface of the Moon. Which
makes even less sense to me than the SEI did. This way, any hardware or
people headed for Mars must first land on the Moon, and then take off again,
making everything more expensive and complicated.

As I see it, this is not the way to do things, if you want to go to Mars.
But maybe Bush doesn't want to go to Mars?

It looks as if this new plan has one primary objective: the establishment of
a new ISS on the Moon. Sending people to Mars is something that *might* come
later, and if it does, it *must* involve the Moon base one way or another,
even though it looks crazy from an engineering point of view.

But what do you think?

--
Steen Eiler Jørgensen
"Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before.
Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway."